Rainy Day Window Art

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The last couple days have left us cooped up indoors because of the rain. I’ll admit, I’m not the biggest fan of rainy days. The kids are cooped up in the house as opposed to playing in the yard most of the day. That kind of drives them (and me!) crazy. While I was trying to keep us occupied, I kind of fumbled into this new painting technique that gave a pretty neat effect. I’m calling it “Rainy Day Art” inspired by our wet weather and the water drop effect on the paper 🙂

We started by pouring a little bit of blue watercolor into a cup and adding water to dilute it until I was happy with the color (liquid watercolors are very vibrant. Leaving it undiluted would have given a much more intense shade of blue!). That’s pretty much all the prep work you have to do.

Next, I just laid out the baking tray with the paint and a brush. My boys were a bit confused because I asked them to paint on the baking tray without any paper! But they painted away nonetheless.

Do you see all those nice little blue droplets of watercolor? They will become the “rain” on our picture very soon!

(Tip: try not to oversaturate the brush. you want droplets to form on the pan, not blobs of water).

Once the pan had a sufficient amount of watercolor droplets, we laid a sheet of plain white paper right on top of it. We used our hands to smooth it down flat on the tray.

Lift the paper and “Voila!” it looks as if rain has dropped down right on it! We used black electrical tape to make a window frame around our paintings, although it looks fantastic as is too! We were so pleased with how much it looked like dripping rain on a window!

Science/Weather connection idea: Later this week I plan on using our paintings to discuss the types of rain we see (drizzle, downpour, sprinkling, etc.) We’ll look at our pictures and decide what type of rain may have been outside our “window” to make the effects that we see.

Looking for more ways to engage your preschoolers (on rainy days and beyond?)